Wayyy back in 2013, I made a character mod called William J. Danninghar. And frankly, he was terrible. Bloated with content that was thematically all over the place (he had a flaming KATANA) and filled to the brim with edge. Just look at it. Eugh.
https://i.imgur.com/sAPCF7q.png
https://i.imgur.com/nQPrdgU.png

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Even from beneath the clutter, William's original theme as a gentleman with a knack for automatons remained in my mind - not a warrior with a flaming sword, guns, and robot armour.

Initially I wanted to double down on the idea that his machine companion was precious to him, and that lead me to the idea of...
https://i.imgur.com/EdHdL7w.png
The original idea was that William would have only the one Butler, which would be 'unkillable' and instead become inactive if damaged until repaired, or if it ran out of fuel. This Butler could be augmented with different body parts in order to adapt to different tasks. This idea was scrapped, though, since I felt it was simply too far from the original William's playstyle. It is an interesting idea I'd still like to visit in the future for sure.

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Instead I decided to give him several robots as he used to, but far more specialised. I wanted him to be unique as a minion character as his minions are strong by their own, but require constant upkeep and can be permanently destroyed if not taken care of unlike Bernie or Abigail while not being expendable.

https://i.imgur.com/75igReq.png

• The Butler Bot remained largely unchanged throughout development; I wanted it to be a sidekick that could help William explore the wide world without need for breaks most characters would need.
  
• The 'Brute' (now Bouncer) was originally a non-combat follower which would dance around and insult monsters to distract them from William and friends like big bernie. I decided since it had metal fists and a foul attitude, it should also punch things. That made it too similar to his other follower, though, as well as the ability to have a tanky, taunting follower that also fights just being blatantly overpowered, so I decided instead to change it from a follower to a friendly guard that would patrol the area it was crafted in. There was also a point in development it liked to find the nearest pig village to live in.
  
• The Buster Bot also changed little throughout development. In terms of role it was made to replace the old Brute and Reapers as William's only real melee DPS follower.
  
• The Battery Hat was also a follower at first, added late into development. Being a follower was actually pretty bad for a ranged unit though. It'd walk into hazards and pull all kinds of stunts that got itself killed. So I opted to make it a deployable turret. That erased potential AI errors as well as adding a new skill ceiling for players to take advantage of; rewarding good placement with long-lasting turrets and punishing poor placement with wasted materials.
  
  Along the way, one of my buddies suggested the ability to upgrade William's machines with gears as a way to show them how much you appreciate them! The original plan was to alter their appearance as they were upgraded, but this ended up being more work than expected (also I was demoralised after noticing an animation bug with pigmen, animations the Bouncer used) and so it was put on the backburner. I probably will finish this eventually.
  
  https://i.imgur.com/sP6hMfr.png
  https://i.imgur.com/5o4Ez8A.png